<p>I agree. ED is terrible for students, and I don’t understand how any school can justify it over SCEA.</p>
<p>I like that Chicago is still one of the few EA holdouts. But if the application burden really gets too heavy, SCEA is always another option that’s still fair to applicants.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if UChicago is at the same level as prestige of other Ivy+ that have SCEA early admission program. I figured lot of students who applied to UChicago applied for early admissions this way (Ivy ED+ Chicago EA). For UChicago to operate SCEA and maintain a high yield, UChicago needs to be very competitive so that it can surpass the appeal of HYPS SCEA for certain amount of students. I think EA pool with dramatically decrease if Chicago EA is switched to SCEA at this point (not saying UChicago is better or worse than other Ivys).</p>
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It’s often a matter of practicality. As I noted above, the flood of EA apps is continuing to rise. How many apps can admissions officers read in a month and a half? </p>
<p>Note that Chicago is virtually alone in offering unrestricted EA among top universities:
[ul][<em>]Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale offer SCEA.
[</em>]MIT and Caltech are more self-selective than Chicago, which will always limit their applicants – Chicago receives double the number of EA applicants as Caltech does total applicants.
[<em>]Universities that formerly had EA, such as Brown and Rice (“interim decision”) have dropped it.
[</em>]Georgetown and Boston College do not allow you to apply ED elsewhere if you’re applying EA.[/ul]</p>
<p>Aside from a few publics (Michigan, UNC, UVA), that leaves only Chicago and Notre Dame as top 30 universities with unrestricted EA, and Notre Dame receives about half of Chicago’s applications. </p>
<p>Perhaps Chicago can continue EA; I agree it is best for the applicants. Whether it will be able to do so, I’m not sure.</p>
<p>I think SCEA would be great. Would cull out the people who just pitched in an application for the heck of it because they saw the school’s ranking, not because they are the type of student that is truly attracted to U of C and would thrive there.</p>
<p>The question is, how many students would be attracted to Chicago SCEA? At the same level, there are other schools such as HYPS which all have SCEA policy. If I were one of them, I would go for other schools just for sake of their prestige unless I’m very very attracted to specific major with specific programs. It would be quite difficult for UChicago to compete with HYPS in SCEA.</p>
<p>Why not just have a policy like Georgetown restricting students from applying ED elsewhere? Seems like Chicago would be then able to maintain its hype while limiting the number of applications.</p>
<p>That being said, Nondorf knows the admissions tactics of the University, and likely planned for a 2,000 app increase this year. He almost certainly wanted it. I doubt that Chicago will move away from its current EA policies.</p>
<p>I love EA! But I’m one of THOSE people who isn’t super in love with UChicago yet, and I wouldn’t have applied SCEA or ED. But I also didn’t apply anywhere else ED, for students like me who maybe haven’t visited yet or don’t have a clear first choice EA is great.</p>
<p>This makes little sense to me:
Those applying SCEA elsewhere cannot apply to Chicago EA. Chicago is already competing with them. The competition with those schools would be the same. Chicago would be competing with other EA schools. That is, SCEA at Chicago would preclude applying to schools not now prohibited.</p>
<p>EA lets students apply to more schools early than SCEA. That advantge probbly helps attract applicants to Chicago.</p>
<p>The only advantage of EA over SCEA is allowing ED applicants to Columbia, Penn, etc. apply to Chicago as well, which is not really an advantage, since they’d HAVE to pick the ED school over Chicago if accepted at both. So, yes, it boosts Chicago’s application numbers, but lowers their yield.</p>
<p>Duke’s ED dropped by 2.6%.</p>
<p>“…The University received 2,586 applications compared to 2,656 received last year, said Dean of Admissions Christoph Guttentag. This decrease—less than 3 percent—comes after a 100 percent increase in early decision applications over the last five years…”</p>
<p><a href=“http://m.dukechronicle.com/article/duke-early-decision-applications-drop-70#/article/duke-early-decision-applications-drop-70[/url]”>http://m.dukechronicle.com/article/duke-early-decision-applications-drop-70#/article/duke-early-decision-applications-drop-70</a></p>
<p>I’m the one of the students who applied Columbia ED and UChicago EA. I still think this is an advantage. Columbia had been my dream school so I applied ED. However, I was worried that if I don’t make Columbia in ED round, I would suffer from university admission pressure until march and april. If I get admission from UChicago and rejection or deferral from Columbia, I’ll at least be quite satisfied and relieved. Just for my psychological satisfaction and relief, I like this combination.</p>
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<p>It is a good ranking game for UChicago to play, since U.S. News and World Report eliminated yield from its ranking methodology a few years ago. Yield is just too easily manipulated, and that factor favors schools using Early Decision.</p>
<p>How is this a good ranking game for Chicago to play, then? Acceptance rate accounts for 1.5% of the total ranking, and switching to SCEA would actually lower the admit rate even more due to a higher yield (less acceptances required to fill the class).</p>
<p>Sure, they can brag about 10,000 early applications, if that’s what you mean. But schools with ED and SCEA still manage to get 30,000+ applications overall; Chicago switching to SCEA will just shift many of the prospective EA applicants to the RD round.</p>
<p>It was eliminated after the Early Admissions Game people raised concerns about USNWR’s motivating colleges to push deadlines earlier and earlier…</p>
<p>Or something.</p>
<p>Do the people criticizing Chicago’s choice to provide Early Action truly believe that they are better informed about the consequences of this decision than the Dean of Admissions, et al are?</p>
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<p>Under SCEA, I would expect UChicago’s acceptance rate to rise, since the early applicant pool would shrink dramatically (potentially by up to 75%). Having EA also is a good strategic move, since this means that UChicago does not have to compete with Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford in the early pool.</p>
<p>based on last years # of ea admissions for uchicago, approximately 1,500, it would appear that this years EA acceptance rate would be around 14%. Just an estimate though.</p>
<p>true and there a lot of people like young people ou here that dont want to go to college and thats sad only if we could get the young to stay in school that would be good and a lot of people would be happy wat u think</p>
<p>No, Chicago DOES have to compete with HYPS in the early pool, but that’s ALL they have to compete with. No one who applies EA to Chicago is permitted to apply EA to any of HYPS. Out of those five colleges, they can only apply early to one. But applying to Chicago doesn’t preclude simultaneously applying early to any other college in the world (at least as far as I know). If you want, you could apply early to Chicago, plus MIT, Georgetown, Michigan, Virginia, Caltech, Boston College, Notre Dame, Tulane . . . Or you could apply to Chicago and an ED college, plus some (not all) of the foregoing. Chicago and MIT, as well as Michigan, Virginia, and I’m sure others, are super-flexible. </p>
<p>So Chicago IS competing with HYPS for early applicants, but not with anyone else. And the 18,000 or so HYPS early applicants who will be deferred or rejected in mid-December constitute a pretty important pool of potential high-quality RD applications for Chicago. Several thousand of them (at least) will apply RD to Chicago.</p>